CNN: Obama pledges 'aggressive' relief effort
President Obama pledged Wednesday that the U.S. government would lead "a swift, coordinated and aggressive effort to save lives" in Haiti after that country's powerful 7.0-magnitude earthquake.

CNN: Campaign commercials flood Massachusetts TV
With less than a week to go until a special Senate election in Massachusetts, the state's airwaves are packed with campaign ads as Democrat Martha Coakley and Republican Scott Brown battle to fill the last three years of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy's term.

The Detroit News: Ilitch mulls run for governor
The political spotlight in the up-for-grabs Democratic gubernatorial primary abruptly shifted to Detroit businesswoman and University of Michigan regent Denise Ilitch on Wednesday after she met with the president at the White House. Although she's considering it, she hasn't decided whether to jump in the race, a knowledgeable source says.

Washington Post: Top public universities faulted on financial aid
Many of the nation's top public universities are giving millions of dollars in financial aid to students from relatively wealthy families instead of to those who urgently need it, resulting in campuses that are often less diverse than those at elite private schools, a new report says.

CNNMoney: Taxorama: 7 changes on the docket
Everybody's angry at banks. Federal deficits are wide and need addressing. And the president and Congress are starting to map out next year's budget. That means they're talking taxes in Washington. The capital is awash in proposals for how to raise revenue and score political points.

Wall Street Journal: 'Tonight Show' Viewership Rises Amid Turmoil
As NBC and Conan O'Brien engage in a game of brinkmanship over the future of "The Tonight Show," Mr. O'Brien's audience has surged, especially among younger people. About 42% more viewers between the ages of 18 and 49 watched the "The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien" Tuesday compared to a day earlier, according to preliminary Nielsen data provided by NBC.

Wall Street Journal: H-P, Microsoft Partner Against Rivals
Hewlett-Packard Co. and Microsoft Corp. said they will invest $250 million in a partnership to more tightly couple their software and hardware products, as rivals Oracle Corp., International Business Machines Corp. and others remake themselves as one-stop shops for technology.

Wall Street Journal: Pickens Shelves Texas Wind Project
T. Boone Pickens, the oilman and clean-energy booster, shelved his massive wind-power project in Texas even as he stepped up his push to increase the use of natural gas for transportation. Cheap natural gas, the lack of electricity-transmission lines and the lingering credit crunch have combined to take the shine off large-scale renewable-energy projects, and those factors led Mr. Pickens to halve his $2 billion wind-turbine order with General Electric Co., said a spokesman for Mr. Pickens's Mesa Power LP.

Anchorage Daily News: Arctic fiber-optic cable could benefit far-flung Alaskans
Alaska Native corporations and a multinational firm are planning to build the first fiber-optic cable between Asia and Europe through the Arctic.The project, estimated to cost roughly $1 billion, involves laying 10,000 miles of undersea fiber-optic cable from Tokyo, along the Alaska coast, through the Northwest Passage, past the southern coast of Greenland to London, company officials said Wednesday.